UDP monitoring for services that fail quietly.
UDP is connectionless, so most monitoring tools quietly ignore it. UptimeRobot doesn't. Watch any UDP-based service, set a packet loss threshold, and validate responses with a keyword.
Advanced features for advanced users.
Confirmed failures, not false alarms
When a check fails, the monitor runs confirmation retries before it alerts you. You hear about real outages, not a single dropped packet.
Monitor by region
Choose monitoring regions across North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania to catch geographically localized outages, when a service is down in one place but still reachable from another.
Manage monitors through the API and MCP
Create, update, and manage UDP monitors through the public API v3 or the UptimeRobot MCP server, with full CRUD support.
Choose your preferred type of notifications
Get instant alerts via email, SMS, voice call, push, or through one of many integrations such as Slack, Zapier, and Splunk.
Response time monitoring
ee UDP response times in a chart and get alerts when a service responds slower than usual.
Multi-location checks
Choose specific monitoring regions and catch issues that only appear in certain locations.
Monitor UDP services on any port.
Point a monitor at any host and UDP port. DNS, SNMP, NTP, SIP, RADIUS, game servers, and other UDP services that return a response.
Send a custom payload.
Some services only answer when you ask correctly. Send custom text or hex as the packet body so DNS servers, game servers, and SIP endpoints respond the way they're meant to.
Define your packet loss threshold.
UDP is connectionless, so some packet loss is normal. Set how much loss is acceptable before a monitor counts as down, and get alerted on quality drops, not just total outages.
Validate the response with a keyword.
A response doesn’t guarantee health. Use a required keyword to ensure the service returns the correct data, not just any reply.
Set up UDP monitoring in seconds.
Be the first to know when a UDP service stops answering. Reliable monitoring warns you before any significant trouble and saves you money.
Benefits of
UDP Monitoring.
See what TCP checks can’t
UDP monitoring gives you a way to check services that would otherwise fail quietly. For example, a DNS server can stop returning the expected response while your website monitor still looks green.
Catch degraded service before a full outage
A service might still respond, but lose enough packets to make calls drop, games lag, or lookups fail. With packet loss thresholds, you can catch quality drops before the service goes fully down.
Confirm the response is actually correct
Keyword checks help confirm the response contains what you expect, so you’re monitoring behavior, not just activity.
What people monitor over UDP.
Hobby and home labs.
- Game servers (Minecraft, Valheim, CS2): check the server is reachable before your players tell you it isn't.
- Home VPN (WireGuard): confirm the tunnel endpoint answers from outside your network.
- DNS resolvers (Pi-hole, AdGuard Home): catch the moment name resolution stops and everything at home looks broken.
- Media servers (Plex, Jellyfin): watch the UDP discovery services your devices rely on to find the library.
- Self-hosted voice chat (Mumble): monitor the voice port itself, not just the machine it runs on.
SMBs and teams.
- Corporate VPN gateways (WireGuard, OpenVPN): catch a dead tunnel endpoint before remote staff report it.
- VoIP infrastructure (SIP, RTP): spot the packet loss behind dropped calls and choppy audio.
- DNS servers, internal or authoritative: verify lookups still return the answer you expect.
- RADIUS authentication servers: know when logins stop working at the auth layer.
- NTP servers: catch time drift at the source, before it breaks logs, certificates, and auth.
- SNMP endpoints: confirm the network devices your dashboards depend on still respond.
- Syslog collectors: see when log delivery stops, instead of finding a silent gap later.
- STUN/TURN servers: keep WebRTC calls connecting for users behind NAT.
Know more than
just up or down.
Multi-location checks, response time tracking, SSL and domain expiry alerts. The details that turn raw uptime data into something you can actually act on.
All you really care about
monitored in one place.
From Websites and APIs to servers and cron jobs, UptimeRobot watches every layer. Nine monitor types, one dashboard.
Build trust with
public status pages.
Be transparent. Share your uptime with the public and inform your customers about any planned (or unplanned) outages.
Add your team members
to keep them notified.
You can invite all your team members to access your monitors, keep them notified and manage incidents. Choose from three levels of user access: read, write and notify-only.
Catch every incident before it reaches your users.
Get notified the instant something breaks: by email, SMS, Phone call, Slack, or webhook. Watch your whole stack from one place and pick the channels that reach your team fastest, so critical issues never sit unseen.
Frequently asked questions.
UDP monitoring is a type of uptime monitoring that checks whether a service running on the User Datagram Protocol is responding. UDP is connectionless, so there's no handshake to confirm a service is alive. A UDP monitor sends packets to a target host and port, checks whether the target responds within the configured timeout, and evaluates packet loss against your selected threshold.
Many services rely on UDP rather than TCP, including DNS, SNMP, NTP, VoIP with SIP, RADIUS authentication, and some game servers. HTTP and TCP port checks can’t properly test those services. Without UDP monitoring, these issues can fail quietly until users report failed lookups, dropped calls, or lag.
During each check, UptimeRobot sends UDP packets to the host and port you specify. The check evaluates whether the target responds within the timeout window, whether packet loss stays within your selected threshold, and, if configured, whether the response contains the expected keyword. If the check fails, UptimeRobot follows its confirmation process before creating an incident and notifying your alert contacts.
TCP port monitoring checks whether a connection opens on a specific port. UDP monitoring sends UDP packets to a host and port, then checks whether the service responds within the timeout window.
Because UDP doesn’t use a handshake, UptimeRobot can also evaluate packet loss and validate the response with a keyword. That makes UDP monitoring better suited for services like DNS, SNMP, NTP, SIP, RADIUS, and game servers.
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